In the modern era, a certain segment of Star Wars fans
and an author who comes from that segment have crafted a concept from disparate
parts of the Star Wars EU. In the EU we have a type of planetary
attack called a Base Delta Zero . . . but the concept as found in the EU and the
concept as held by that segment of fans do not match. Their version
involves melting the whole surface of a world . . . the EU version does not.

In the below, we'll look at the chronology of events and EU datapoints that
led to the Base Delta Zero Fallacy.

In 1989, West End Games published a work called "Scavenger Hunt". Within that
work, a Rebel base on planet Dankayo is attacked by three Imperial Star
Destroyers, whose orders were . . .

"... to rendezvous at Dankayo and reduce the tiny
base to molten slag.
Even
before the last of its atmosphere drifted away, before the dense clouds of atomized topsoil could begin to settle, Imperial
transports Elusive and Timely, as well as a complement of TIE fighters, moved in to perform "mop-up" operations and a
thorough search of Dankayo's now evenly-cratered surface."
-- Scavenger Hunt, p.3

So, three Star Destroyers slag (melt) a base
facility, and
attack the rest of the surface, leaving it evenly-cratered and without an
atmosphere (or one made of atomized topsoil . . . that's less than clear).
We do not know the size of Dankayo, so much of that information is useless for
gauging firepower. But in any case, the Empire made its point . . .
slagging the base and pock-marking the surface with craters is a definite way of
informing the Rebellion that their bases are not welcome.

It is clear, though, that the planet itself was mostly unharmed,
considering that a survivor in a "deep planet shelter" of the "tiny base"
survived. Transports and TIE fighters moved in to perform "mop-up"
operations.

This act was not described as a Base Delta Zero, though we get a sense of
what three Star Destroyers can do.

Then, in 1994 and 1995, a mass of new books started to come out, and
three of these had planetary attack references. The slagging of a Rebel
base in "Scavenger Hunt" suddenly became:

"The Imperial Star Destroyer has enough firepower
to reduce a civilized
world to slag."
-- Imperial Sourcebook

Well, now, that's quite a change! Now we've gone from
three Star
Destroyers against a tiny base on a
small moon to one Star Destroyer against an entire civilized world!
Not much need for mop-up then.

Of course, if you can reduce an uncivilized world to slag,
there would seem to be little point in mentioning the presence or absence of
civilization. This would seem to argue that instead of melting the surface
of a planet, the ISD is instead claimed to have enough firepower to melt the
traces of civilization. Also intriguing is the following from the
same source:

"System bombards are used when the Empire would
rather completely
destroy a world rather than see it fall into Rebel hands.""System
bombard contains an average of 100 ships divided between three
bombard squadrons and a light squadron. If an admiral feels that force
superiority has done less than a thorough job of removing hostile craft
from the system, a system bombard squadron will be augmented with ships
from the light squadron."

As per the Sourcebook, the 100 ship fleet may include a few ISDs. Thus,
it seems clear that a lone ISD isn't going to be slagging the entire surface,
when three out of four of the squadrons are required to "completely destroy a
world". How could a single vessel achieve the same goal against an
uncivilized world?

The answer, of course, is that it can't. A Star
Destroyer can wipe out a planetary civilization per what we've been given, but
it takes a number of ships to support the maneuver. By analogy, a modern
warship might be able to sit off the coast and destroy a city, but it takes a
fleet and other assets to do it safely.

Indeed, what it might be
expected to do may not be too different from what we're told in
The Star Wars Adventure Journal. The SWAJ was a little more modest in its
approach, but it has given us the name of the order for a total planetary
attack:

"Sir, what about bombardment? Is there a stage
for that?"
"Blasting a planet from orbit is easy -- you don't need me to tell you
how to do that. Limited orbital strikes would occur during the invasion
stage. Just hope you are never given a Base Delta Zero order, lieutenant.
Ah, yes, another question?"
"Sir, what's the Base Delta Zero order?"
"Base Delta Zero is the Imperial code order to destroy all population
centres and resources, including industry, natural resources and cities.
All other Imperial codes are subject to change, as you well know, but this
code is always the same to prevent any confusion when the order is given.
Base Delta Zero is rarely issued. ...."
-- "A World to Conquer"

This makes a little more sense. Three Star Destroyers can fire on and
eventually slag a Rebel base facility of unspecified size, so simply
destroying the population centers, resources (presumably major ones, unless we
wish to consider every speck of dirt strategically valuable) and
industry (perhaps melting some buildings
and such) shouldn't be too much worse, given a
sufficient number of Star Destroyers.

This view is supported by the Star
Wars Technical Journal of 1995, which makes reference to turning a
planet's surface into "smoking debris". The
problem comes with what is
said after that . . . "a matter of hours".

Naturally, caution has been thrown to the wind by some
Star Wars fanatics. The popular claim today is that a Base Delta Zero operation
involves a single Star Destroyer's
act of *melting* the
*entire surface* of a world in *a single hour*.

So, basically, they decided to pick and choose. They took the name BDZ
without bothering to use the definition of it given by the Adventure Journal.
They took the slagging from "Scavenger Hunt" and the Sourcebook without
bothering to acknowledge the targets which were offended in that manner. They
took the "entire surface" from the Technical Journal, but failed to acknowledge
the smoking cinder. And finally, they took the mere hours from the SWTJ without
acknowledging the utter lack of slagging involved in that example, and even made
it faster.

They claimed support
for their view in the new "New Jedi Order Sourcebook" of 2002, which (they say)
claims
that a planet named Caamas was bombarded and all life wiped out in the space of a day. Naturally, the fact that the number of ships involved in this maneuver is
not given doesn't even make the fanatics blink.

And so, the legend of the Base Delta Zero maneuver has grown and grown,
until it is now codified as part of the inflated numbers and statements in
the Episode II Incredible Cross Sections, written by
one of that fanatic segment, where the idea of slagging an
entire planet's surface in a matter of hours is stated to be the Base
Delta Zero command. This makes it as good as canon fact to many in spite
of the horrendous inconsistencies.

The above sections have existed on this site largely unchanged since sometime
prior to November 2002. As of 2006, others who help shape the EU have
realized the errors inherent in the fanatics' reformulation. Given that
much of Saxton's work on his website and the numbers he placed in the ICS
children's book are based on his Base Delta Zero calculations, it should come as
little surprise that other EU authors have derived different numbers for Star
Wars reactor energies and firepower.

One such author is Gary Sarli, who had
previously
conducted his own analysis of the Death Star II size that was contrary to
Saxton's, earning him no friends among the fanatic Saxton supporters. His
more recent analysis of Star Wars fuel supplies and reactor energy for an EU
work was repudiated by Saxton fans, and his defense of his analysis wound up
involving
discussion on the Base Delta Zero:

Finally, Saxton's numbers are based off of several sources wherein he
attempts to calculate the energy required for a star destroyer to do what we
see on screen: the comment that a SD uses more energy in a hyperspace jump
than "some nations" use in their entire history (a quote originally from WEG's
Imperial Sourcebook); the calculation of the energy that shields must be able
to absord given observed asteroid impacts (in ESB); the calculation of energy
required to vaporize an asteroid (again in ESB); and, finally, a calculation
of how much energy it would take to perform a "Base Delta Zero" command. [...]

All the numbers are in the same ballpark except this last one, and those of us
who know Star Wars really well can immediately spot the error: He decided that
"Base Delta Zero" (the destruction of all "assets of production" including
cities, mines, arable land, factories, sentients, and droids, according to its
original source in WEG's Imperial Sourcebook) meant "total liquification of
the entire surface of the planet to a depth of 1 meter." Needless to say,
this is not necessary to fulfill the definition of a Base Delta Zero! Not
by a long shot. It appears that Saxton interpreted the phrase "reduce a
civilized world to slag" quite literally and, more importantly, assumed that
this was a reference to Base Delta Zero (but it most certainly is not). The
"slag" comment is another "flavor text" quote from WEG's Imperial Sourcebook,
not a part of the Base Delta Zero definition or discussion -- Saxton
unfortunately conflated the two concepts in addition to treating the word
"slag" as absolutely literal instead of as hyperbole or an expression (much as
how you or I might use the word "nuke" to refer to something other than a
nuclear detonation, or how you might say that a military force "crushes" its
opponent without literally referring to physical crushing).

To give you an idea: Saxton calculates that it would require over 400 million
megatons of energy, equally distributed over the surface of a planet, to melt
its entire crust to a depth of 1 meter. Now, as a comparison: 100 megatons is
enough to wreck the Earth and cause nuclear winter (see Carl Sagan's "The
Nuclear Winter"), and the total US and Soviet arsenals during the height of
the Cold War was somewhere around 400,000 megatons (give or take a hundred
thousand), enough to completely obliterate every human on the planet several
hundred times over. Saxton, meanwhile, assumes that the Imperial Navy would
choose to spend its time liquifying the surface of a planet for no good reason
-- why keep shooting once everyone is dead and there's nothing left in a
usable form? -- and thus he comes up with a number about 1,000 times more than
the combined arsenals of our entire planet. (Another comparison: This is 8
times more than the energy that would be produced by a 6-mile asteroid or
comet smashing into the Earth, the current likely suspect for killing the
dinosaurs and almost all life on the planet other than the the smallest
scavengers such as rodents and insects.)

Now, realistically, is that necessary to fulfill the definition of "destroying
all assets of production"?

Also, Saxton assumes that a single Star Destroyer can do this in one
hour (ostensibly to prevent the enemy from evacuating from the other side
of the planet) -- I can only assume that he completely forgot that the
definition of Base Delta Zero was given in the context of Imperial Navy
support to an Imperial Army occupation of a planet, a mission that would
normally require about a squadron of capital ships (described in the section
on the Order of Battle just a few pages later in the Imperial Sourcebook).
Thus, the Star Destroyer wouldn't be acting alone, so it need not have this
capability all by itself, and it certainly wouldn't be necessary to do it in
less than an hour because the Navy would have already established space
superiority prior to the Army's pacification efforts -- thus, there
wouldn't be anyone with any starships left who could evacuate [...]

So, we have the following things that I, as a fellow scientist, can only
characterize as erroneous assumptions:
* Overestimating the energy required for Base Delta Zero, by at least a factor
of 1,000. (Note: Even at this reduced level, the surface would be "slagged" in
the form of ejecta from the craters created from turbolaser blasts -- the
liquified rock would essentially settle over the entire planet's surface to an
average depth of approximately 1 mm, give or take depending on how much is
blasted out of the planet's gravitational pull.)
* Underestimating the amount of time required for a Base Delta Zero, possibly
by an order of magnitude or even more.
* Underestimating (again perhaps by an order of magnitude) the number of
starships that would normally be involved in a Base Delta Zero.

Put all that together, and you get a completely inaccurate estimate of how
much energy the turbolasers must be capable of projecting and, by extension,
how much energy the reactors and engines must be capable of generating.

Saxton himself notes that this number was several orders of magnitude higher
than any of the other calculations he'd made (hyperdrive, shields, vaporizing
asteroids, etc.); now, rather than question these assumptions and ask if it's
really reasonable to think that the ship needs to liquify the entire surface
in 1 hour all by itself to fulfill its mission, he just uses with the higher
numbers. To me, this is a serious mistake -- you should always be ready and
even eager to challenge your starting assumptions, especially when dealing
with so many unknowns.

As a result of this, he gets the unrealistic figures that he put in ICS [...]

Now, do you see why I called his numbers "unreasonable"? [...] This is the
reasoning I presented to Leeland Chee and his continuity minions over at
LucasFilm when I submitted Jedi Counseling 94, and they approved it.

Saxtonian fanatics from StarDestroyer.Net, having already swarmed
Wookieepedia where the discussion began, soon swarmed the Wizards of the Coast
forum where the above post was made. Given that this group is
largely composed of the same fanatics who
harassed EU author Karen Traviss all across the internet for failing
to wank out Star Wars to the levels they desired, earning them the title
"Talifans", their attacks on Sarli should come as little surprise.

Aside: Nuclear Winter - Wong vs. Sarli

One of the more entertaining claims they made was that, in the above, Sarli
had claimed a 100 megaton blast would wreck the planet. As Wong put
it,

For those who don't know, a 100 megaton blast would not cause noticeable
environmental damage to the Earth, never mind "wrecking" it (the Soviets set
off a 60 megaton device in the 1960s with no noticeable effect whatsoever).
- http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=103495

This is wrong, of course, though it became the SDN mantra . . . Sarli
never suggested a single 100 megaton blast event. He referred to Carl
Sagan's
paper "The Nuclear Winter", based on the TTAPS study. Within it, Sagan
refers to a small nuclear war featuring a total of 100 megatons exchanged,
presumably in the form of 50 of the 2-megaton bombs mentioned in the first
paragraph (though that's not specified with 100% certainty):

Perhaps the greatest surprise in our work was that even small nuclear wars
can have devastating climatic effects. We considered a war in which a mere 100
megatons were exploded, less than one percent of the world arsenals, and only
in low-yield airbursts over cities. This scenario, we found, would ignite
thousands of fires, and the smoke from these fires alone would be enough to
generate an epoch of cold and dark almost as severe as in the 5000 megaton
case. The threshold for what Richard Turco has called The Nuclear Winter is
very low.

Wong also claims that the TTAPS study has been debunked, a unique view of the
history of the idea.
If anything, it's been enhanced and refined. Further, in 2006
researchers
stated
that even a limited regional nuclear exchange, featuring 100 individual
15-kiloton bombs (a total of only 1.5 megatons) creating urban firestorms, could
produce a decade of several-degree-cooler temperatures, wrecking much of
civilization due to a sudden difficulty in sustaining crop yields.

However, Wong calls his own counter-statements "absolute proof that Sarli is
an ignorant moron".

Also probably an absolutely "ignorant moron" according to Wong is TFN and
WotC poster "Thrawn McEwok", who
posted
the following:

2.) Coruscant and the Core Worlds describes the bombardment of
Caamas without reference to crust-melting: a "firestorm decimated all
vegetation and animals and most of the sentient Caamasi", leading to
ecological and climatological collapse: a lack of plant-life to convert oxygen
or provide food killed off surviving animals, and "Immense clouds of soot and
smoke" rendered the atmosphere toxic to most sentients, requiring "a breathing
mask for any sustained activity". The lack of vegetation led to widespread
erosion and dust-storms, and "even the oceans have become polluted from
run-off".

The actual devastation seems somewhat less absolute than some people were
assuming - but no less devastating, in many respects.

Seems the EU authors that the fanatics are so quick to attack understood
firestorms and nuclear winter better than they do. Incidentally,
I, Jedi also supports that view:

Well back before I was born, right after the Clone Wars, the
world of Caamas was brutally attacked and hit with enough
firepower that the vegetation boiled off the world, leaving it a
dead rock, and the vast majority of the Caamasi dead with it.

Now, back to McEwok:

[...]

4.) The planned BDZ at Nar Shadda in The Hutt Gambit involves a
surface landing: Han's POV is that "even droids were to be captured or
destroyed." (my italics); and Soontir Fel reflects on what the operation would
entail: "they'd have to send down shuttles and ground troops to mop up, and
he, Fel, being a conscientious commander, would have to oversee that
operation. Visions of smoking rubble strewn with blackened corpses filled his
mind".

5.) And my favourite: infantry can carry out what's basically a local BDZ:

"The First Sun is a repulsorlift infantry regiment designed primarily to run
search-and-destroy missions, which he troops of the unit jocularly refer to as
SLAMs (Search, Locate, Annihilate mission). Indeed, the regiment often
undertakes missions with the same objective as the "Base Delta Zero" command:
the elimination of all assets of production, including factories, land, mines,
fisheries, droids, and sapient beings (particularly any witnesses that may
have seen atrocities being commited)."--Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments from the
Rim

That Hutt Gambit example (#4 above) is part of a new claim by the
fanatics. In the novel, we get the following:

Han tensed, but made himself stay calm. He could tell Greelanx was
really tempted. "Sir, what are your orders?" he asked. "Perhaps we
can think of something that will benefit us both, and yet leave you
free of any charge of wrongdoing."

My orders are to enter the Hutt system, execute order Base Delta Zero
upon the Smuggler's Moon, Nar Shaddaa, and then blockade Nal Hutta and
Nar Hekka until the Hutts agree to allow full customs inspections and a
complete military presence on their worlds. The Moff doesn't want to
cripple the Hutts too badly, but he wants Nar Shaddaa reduced to
rubble."

Han swallowed, his mouth dry. Base Delta Zero was an order that called
for the decimation of a world--all life, all vessels, all systems--even
droids were to be captured or destroyed. His worse nightmare come
true.

Later in the book we get the following:

The worst problem, as far as Fel was concerned, was implementing order
Base Delta Zero on Nar Shaddaa.

Fel knew that last wasn't Greelanx's fault. The Sector Moff had issued
that order. But in the admiral's place, Fel would have at least tried
to get Sam Shild to modify that instruction. The Emperor's directive
had been to shut down the smuggling operations out of Nar Shaddaa and
other smuggler nests, especially the gunrunners. The directive hadn't
included anything about razing the entire moon. Fel had had
considerable combat experience, and he knew that sentients of most
species would fight like cornered Corellian vrelts when it came to
protecting their homes and families.

There were millions of sentients on Nar Shaddaa, many of whom were only
peripherally involved with the smuggling business. Elderly sentients,
children . . . Soontir Fel grimaced.

This would be his first Imperial-ordered massacre. He'd been lucky to
avoid such an order for this long, the way things were going.

Fel would carry out his orders, but he wasn't happy about them. He
knew images of the flaming buildings would haunt him, as he gave each
order to fire. And afterward . . . they'd have to send down shuttles
and ground troops to mop up, and he, Fel, being a conscientious
commander, would have to oversee that operation.

Visions of smoking rubble strewn with blackened corpses filled his
mind, and Fel took a deep breath.

Per the above, Base Delta Zero involves reducing the smuggler's moon to
rubble. While the reformulators might wish to presume that this means
reducing the entire moon to rubble, the context makes it clear that this BDZ
will merely involve destroying the traces of civilization. After
all, if you're slagging a world there won't be droids to capture or ground for
ground troops to land on . . . certainly no blackened corpses in the rubble of
burned buildings. The Essential Chronology suggests that Sarn Shild
was authorized to turn the moon to slag, but obviously such "flavor text"
hyperbole doesn't reflect the reality of the orders given or what was to be
expected.

Saxton's calculations are based on a fundamentally-flawed understanding of
the Star Wars EU. The fact that he and his SDN associates managed to
get some of their beliefs into the ICS children's books was the highlight of
their mindset, bringing those flaws into the EU itself. However, the SDN
Talifan have squandered that success with their behavior, and, per Traviss and
Sarli, Saxton's erroneous numbers are steadily being retconned from the Star
Wars EU continuity.

Oh, and by the way, if you take a Base Delta Zero operation for what it
actually is, the destruction of the civilized areas and assets of production of
a planet, you'll find a remarkable similarity to something which already existed
in Star Trek, much to the Talifan's chagrin. Known as General Order 24, this order required a starship to
destroy the entire civilized surface of a planet.